He Is Hungry
by nycforme
Summary: Post season 3 and six months after the fall, Hannibal and Will have moved away to France. A look into the first time Will presents himself to Hannibal's bed and how they got to their new home. My first story for this fandom, hoping for this to turn into a series that looks into how many times it takes Will to present himself to Hannibal before Hannibal concedes. Eventually M.
1. Chapter 1

The first time Will went to Hannibal's bed there was no deciding factor that tightened his fingers around the knob. One moment he was barely clothed outside of Hannibal Lecter's bedroom, the next moment he was barely clothed inside Hannibal Lecter's bedroom. Will wore nothing but his grey briefs, pajama shorts and shirts were unreasonable in the south of France in July…and he wanted his intentions to be clear. Torturing himself over the fact that his intentions would be made clear, unmistakably clear, Will had stood in front of the large cherry wood door for an immeasurable amount of time. It could have been a few drowning minutes or rushing hours, time hadn't been Will's strong suit for quite some time. The doctor was already in bed with the blankets crisply tucked across his waist, chest bare and rhythmically rising as his eyes perused the open book in front of him.

Will wasn't sure if it was he who allowed himself a moment to adjust or if it was Hannibal who allowed Will the moment to adjust, though he had an inkling that it was the latter. Seconds did not tick by nor did they drag, instead they stretched outward and fell thick like molasses. Eventually Hannibal peeled off his reading glasses before taking in Will's bare figure. Somewhere in the back of Will's mind he wondered if Hannibal could see the goosebumps that rose across his skin and prickled sharp behind his eyes at the feeling of Hannibal's intense gaze. The glasses and book were placed upon the bedside table and Will struggled not to shift from foot to foot, he wasn't sure if he succeeded and the swaying was his own vision or if he was truly rocking back and forth in anticipation of Hannibal's approval.

It had been a long six months since the cliff, the dragon, everything else. From boat to boat they travelled until Hannibal smuggled them both to the house of an old friend who was tiringly handsome and whose eyes never steered far from Hannibal's figure. It was that handsome man, Charlie ("please, never Charles") who insisted they have their own guest bedrooms (Will spent the night decidedly not sleeping and straining his ears for any sounds of life coming from Hannibal's room, he heard none) before granting them passports the next morning over Hannibal's fresh French toast. Cool light poured in over breakfast where Will spent the first few minutes wondering if it was possible to be able to count the rings under your own eyes, trying to ignore the fact that Hannibal wore a white apron over his red sweater and that Charlie didn't wear a shirt at all and spent the morning slowly sucking at strawberries. Will wasn't hungry much, he also didn't feel that it had been too long since he saw Hannibal in an apron and he certainly had not missed the sight, not even a little bit…at all.

"Doctor Henry Ilafaim and Wesley Ilafaim." Hannibal's eyes were mischievous as he made a show of kissing his friend on the cheek before handing the passports to Will. Will stared at the folded papers in front of him, his own blank gaze met his sleepy stare.

"Henry _Ilafaim_ —comprenez vous?" Charlie was smug at his own joke, a joke that Hannibal explained with that annoyingly _present_ twinkle in his eye.

"Ilafaim: Il a faim…He is hungry, in French. Charlie, you'll give us a way." Hannibal was not lecturing, he was pleased with the pun. While Charlie laughed and denied that fact ("Hannibal, I don't believe you could ever be caught—no matter how bad any man tries to catch you.") Will felt his world centering down to the black ink on the two passports, realizing for the first time that they shared a last name.

"Brothers." It flopped out rather dumbly onto the table. A plain word, ugly really. He'd never had a brother; once he had thought Jack could be like a brother, but no. In his mind it had sounded much more…well, it had sounded much _more_. Brothers? Brothers! Brothers?! He couldn't decide.

"Not necessarily." Hannibal used that tone familiar to Will from before. Before Abigail's death, the first one, the fake one. And so, he supposed, before her real death too. _When had he started measuring time in his surrogate daughter's deaths?_ Hannibal was testing the waters, checking and noting Will's reaction rather than making a true offering based on his own wants. Will did not want Hannibal acting out of an intrigue in Will's reactions, but before Will could form an answer Charlie cut in—

"What? Do you mean husbands, _Henry_? With Wesley?" Will had a feeling he had picked out that awful name on purpose, but he wasn't watching Charlie, he was watching Hannibal whose shoulders made the most minuscule up and down moment that Will supposed counted as a shrug.

"Why not? Wes?" The crackle of bacon hardly had to fill a lull as Will's mouth retorted before his brain could process the strict and unamused,

"Why not."

Three months later and Hannibal still did not treat him like a husband. It was Hannibal who found the house in France, it was Hannibal who decorated it, it was Hannibal who assigned Will the guest bedroom with the window overlooking the lake, and it was Hannibal who kept a steady distance from Will in the evenings and often disappeared to his bedroom only an hour after dinner. It was Hannibal, then, whose eyebrows quirked slightly before he rose and took silent but heavy steps toward Will. There had been times when Will had wanted to kiss Hannibal, before and after the fall, but since their "swim" (as Hannibal referred to it casually) the doctor had made a rather strict point of keeping his distance and making those moments fall into longer time spans apart. Then, however, was certainly one of those moments when Will Graham wanted to kiss Hannibal Lecter.

Hair free of product, chest free of shirt, eyes free of that shield that he had solidly been carrying for half of a year—it was the Hannibal from the top of the cliff again with wide blown eyes and pursed lips who stood before him. Heat radiated between them, practically vibrating as they stood nearly toe-to-toe. Speckles of cherry were visible in Hannibal's irises and the image of cherries being boiled in a pot of blood floated to mind, the irony bubbles gurgling and popping as the cherries bobbed and spun. Will thought he could practically smell the raw iron of humanity in the pot before he realized he was smelling Hannibal. It made his knees weak, it had been so long since they had been so close. If Hannibal moved any closer, Will was certain he would be able to _feel_ the goosebumps at that point. The first boat had left them in close quarters but the need to take shifts in sailing had seldom kept them in the same room for very long, much to Will's chagrin. Hannibal leaned in and Will's bottom lip puckered of its own accord, an extended arm coolly moved past him and then suddenly Hannibal was stepping back and offering his heavy blue robe to Will with the shield firmly back in place. Will accepted the clothes before his brain had caught up with the route change.

"My dear boy," Oh how Will ached at those words, he was ashamed at the dull throb his cock gave at the term of endearment, "you'll catch a cold with your bare feet on the wood. Get some sleep." A large hand and long fingers were at his back, leading him out to the hall with his thin smile and the wish of sweet dreams. Will knew it was an act, though he had to reinsure himself of it (because it was so easy to believe that Hannibal would be willing to bring that cool nature between them) with the reminders that if Hannibal didn't want him there he would have been eaten, as well as the fact of Hannibal's undying curiosity. If Hannibal was not curious about Will in more intimate terms than that of a friend, he would have certainly asked why Will was standing nearly naked in his bedroom. The door clicked shut behind him and the robe was stiflingly hot, a sweat picked up at the back of his neck. Will was back where he started, the shield was firmly reinstated, but it had fallen. Will had managed to bring it tumbling down as Hannibal stalked toward his figure, and he had every intention of bringing it down again—for good.


	2. Chapter 2

Will had not grown up in a home where regular meals with everyone gathered around the table were a habit, or a tradition. That was the positive word for habit, wasn't it? Tradition was steeped in connotations of love, pride, joy…habit meant what? Habit meant it was something you trained yourself to do. Before Hannibal, eating was a habit for Will Graham. When he met Hannibal it turned into a luxury and then after (after what he was not sure, not even he could peg down when exactly things started to change—when everything changed) food became a tradition. Finding cheap gas station meals made up of stale hot dog buns and plastic cakes in his shitty, freezing car was a habit he would have been happy to forget, like much of his childhood. Though it had drastically changed since Hannibal's entrance into his life, eating was still no hobby for Will like it was for his companion, but waking early to the smell of steaming coffee and trudging down to sit in their airily lit kitchen was not a tradition Will could complain about. Though the morning after Hannibal had ushered Will away from his room in a thick robe with a faux-oblivious gaze and a fatherly pat on the back, Will wished very much to skimp on the morning tradition they had established.

He woke with the acidic taste of rejection in his mouth that gave his gut that horribly wobbly feeling that brought him back to his first year of lecturing, sitting in his office with liquid panic slicking his hair to his forehead and standing in front of his podium with crumpled tissues dampened by palm sweat obscuring his notecards. If he avoided breakfast there would be no misconstruing why he had entered Hannibal's room late in the night wearing only underwear, not that there was any denying that it was a sexual advance in the first place but Hannibal was leading him in a world of pretend. They pretended they were innocent, pretended they were married, pretended they didn't want more from each other. Will had attempted to stop pretending, he'd stripped himself of his costume and asked Hannibal to ground him in reality, but he had been denied. Chapped bottom lip growing steadily drier between his teeth, Will rolled to his side to read the clock on the bedside table. 6:57. In three minutes it would be expected for him to be in his pajamas at the island in the kitchen eagerly awaiting coffee, so he would be.

The wood was cool beneath his feet as he gingerly slipped on his worn sweatpants, a grey shirt, and wool scarf. He hesitated momentarily with his fingers pressed against the plush of the navy robe hanging over the desk chair. His closet had greatly expanded since they'd "married." Any argument he made was mute with Hannibal's simplified justification of the copious amount of clothes that seemed to appear in Will's closet, "We are married, William, I won't have my husband leaving the house looking as if he's wandered out of a soup kitchen. No sensible husband would." That explanation, of course, had sparked an argument that lasted a grand forty-five minutes and ended with Hannibal dramatically placing his hands on the table in concession, "William, they are gifts. I don't recall myself _ordering_ you to wear anything. By all means, do as you please." Since then, Will had made a point of dressing as he pleased and then adding an accessory to accommodate Hannibal's taste; not that he necessarily had an issue with Hannibal's taste, he would even admit to liking the clothes if the conversation arose again, but it was a matter of grounding himself that he couldn't explain. If he was deprived of a touch that would help him stay centered in himself, if he was to be coldly shut out from the one man who had made him feel like _him_ , then by all means he was going to continue dressing as if he had no one to keep him grounded. "Don't make a home in another person's heart, you never know when they'll lose the capacity to have one," Molly had told Walter once in front of Will, he'd felt his world stutter to a stop as she nonchalantly went back to the plain spaghetti she'd prepared.

"Good morning, Will. How are you feeling?" Hannibal's back was to him as Will dragged himself from his thoughts and sat at the stool with blue ceramic mug in front of it. Will had picked out the mugs as a sort of house warming gift for Hannibal and brought them home with the nervousness he used to only reserve for conversations with Alana. Hannibal had pulled one mug out with a studious gaze before giving a tight lipped smile and murmuring which cabinet they belonged in.

"Fine, thanks. What're you making?" Hannibal turned and his eyes kept the barrier in place, directly behind the familiar examining gaze of his doctor. Perhaps, Will thought with the iron-taste of chipped lip in his mouth, if they kept the conversation normal then things could continue on their regular path and he could find a new way of asking Hannibal for confirmation that their lives were more than the superficial exterior they had created as a way of remaining incognito.

"Apricot crepes and eggs, I imagine you're hungry after your bout of exercise last night." The world snapped into a vivid new version of reality and Will nearly dropped the mug.

"My…exercise?"

"You were sleep walking, again William, I thought you would remember... I found you standing in my bedroom shivering at about one in the morning—do you not remember?" Hannibal leaned against the counter, the jar of jam he had pulled from the fridge forgotten as he stared intently at Will. His teeth grit and he wondered if the twitch in Hannibal's jaw was from the grating sound or the sudden change of energy in the room.

"I wasn't sleepwalking, you know that."

"What were you doing then, Will?" The steadiness of his voice infuriated Will, sent him jumping to his feet and slapping his palms on the marble counter with a resonating _thwack_.

"You know what I was doing!" A split in his consciousness brought him quickly back to Jack Crawford yelling in the men's bathroom, crimson water under a cold sink, the twist and screech of rubber soles on linoleum flooring. Then he focused on Hannibal, on the small tug at the side of his mouth that barely hinted at a smile.

"Tell me what you think you were doing, Will." The fucker was amused by his outburst, Will seethed.

"Your crepes are burning." Hardly glancing away, Hannibal flicked his wrist and the crepes slid onto their respective plates before returning to his pensive, leaning stance across from Will.

"Tell me what you think you were doing." It was a challenge then, hardly disguised as one of their faux-therapy sessions that Hannibal enjoyed randomly dusting into their conversations. Their silences could never be defined as "lulls in conversation." Their silences were filled, intensely, constantly, with the silent energy of their perspective thoughts.

"Stop shutting me out, Hannibal. Don't play games with me, you know I wasn't sleepwalking!" His breath was taut, carefully measured as his throat constricted and he heard himself yell out, "We're supposed to be married!" His voice echoed in the white kitchen and he found himself burning his tongue as he attempted to guzzle down more coffee, in a grounding exercise to occupy his hands. It's the first time he's said the sentence out loud. It sounds weird in his voice; like rain splashing the mud out of puddles, the reality of the sentence is there but washed away easily by the façade Hannibal has crafted for them.

"Not legally."

"I didn't realize the law suddenly held much precedence over you." Anger bubbled again in Will's skin as the conversation sliced open a cathartic vein in him and he suddenly found himself able to categorize his feelings. That open door roped forward the realization that he felt like he did all those years ago, sometime before he was released from his holding cell when he could feel the itchy, uncomfortable presence of Hannibal in his mind and the vague, dull thudding that was the lack of his own voice.

"Don't be petty, William, not when intelligence fits you so neatly." There was no doubt in Will's mind that he was being antagonized but the sensation of his tongue being cut out and presented to him on a silver platter brought his hand swiping sideways and the coffee mug cascading to shatter against the white of the kitchen tile. Blue ceramic bled brown blood and Hannibal's concentrated gaze remained there for a long, withheld beat before turning back to a breathless Will.

"Do you feel better?" Hannibal's question had Will running his coarse hands over his face and pushing down all memories that this argument brought to the surface, of how many times he wanted to scream that question in Hannibal's face when he couldn't, the feel of Abigail's hot blood spraying over him and fogging his glasses. Viciously, he reached out across the counter and grabbed Hannibal's fingers. It was a desperate, painful clutch and he was momentarily shocked by how willingly the elegant digits moved away from the marble counter and into his frantic, trembling grasp. He felt shaken, barely stable with the unreliable life float bobbing in front of him, hardly in his grasp.

"The cup isn't putting itself back together, Hannibal. We are free from whatever you're worried about; I'm sick of your sulking. We're married. Now, you can start acting like it or live in denial—that's your prerogative, but you will not convince me that I'm crazy because you can't handle the reality you've crafted for yourself." Any other day he would have stomped away, but the veil being lifted from his companion's eyes froze Will to the spot. The veil swirled away like milk in tea and left a much more human Hannibal staring at a quivering Will, forehead slick with a sheen of sweat and the veins in his arms protruding with the failed effort of restraint.

"I didn't realize you wanted this marriage, Will. I would hate for you to feel obligated to anything." It was a half-truth, Will knew, but one that he would accept over the whole-lie he had been receiving previously. But then there was an admittance from his side, of wanting their marriage, if he did not refute his _husband's_ words.

"You should know me well enough by now to know that I'm not accustomed to acting under obligation." There, he had admitted it, a part of him had been accepting for the cliché weight to be lifted off his chest. If that had occurred, it only left him feeling as if he would float away in uncertainty, his knees had turned to jelly.

"Have you ever married out of a sense of obligation before?" Their hands were still entwined, Will's cool fingers clutching Hannibal's white ones savagely.

"I loved Molly."

"I see." It was then that he removed himself from Will's grip and took a moment to straighten the apron at his waist. "Well, William, as you can imagine I have no qualms with treating this like a real marriage if that is your wish."

"Good." He felt himself nodding curtly, struggling to breathe again, his lungs shrunken and fileted in his aching ribs.

"Good, then we're agreed: a real marriage, no secrets, no ambiguity—complete openness and honesty." There was a _crack_ as an egg was opened on the frying pan followed by the _pop_ of the jam jar opening in preparation for the crepes.

"You make wedding vows sound like a threat." Will's chuckle was strained, throat dry as Hannibal glanced up from his preparation with the toothy smile and admiring stare that Will had missed, longed for, agonized over for the past few ugly months. The kitchen felt too small suddenly, as if Hannibal had chosen to expand his presence and allow his charisma to fill the white room, barely leaving room for Will's quieting breaths. He was lightheaded at the picturesque sight that Hannibal, his husband, made standing over their crackling breakfast.

"You're not sure that they aren't." If Will had blinked he would have missed the wink, he wished he hadn't broken the mug out of a sudden need to occupy his hands.

"I'll go get the broom." It was meant to be a confirmation of their peace but it came out as a frigid attempt at evading any intimacy in their conversation.

"Excellent." Will turned his back on the painfully poignant image of Hannibal spreading the jam knife over the blonde crepes. "After breakfast I'll help you move your things into our bedroom."

Shaky fingers fumbled with the door knob leading to the storage closet and Will could have sworn he heard Hannibal's light chuckle from the kitchen. A real marriage it would be.


End file.
